Inspired by the 1983 cult classic film, Wargames, DEFCON superbly evokes the tension, paranoia and suspicion of the Cold War era, playing on the fascinating aspects of psychological gameplay that occur during strategic nuclear warfare. You play a General hidden deep within an underground bunker.

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About This Game

Inspired by the 1983 cult classic film, Wargames, DEFCON superbly evokes the tension, paranoia and suspicion of the Cold War era, playing on the fascinating aspects of psychological gameplay that occur during strategic nuclear warfare.
You play a General hidden deep within an underground bunker. Your mission is to successfully exterminate your enemy's civilian population whilst saving your own. Points are awarded or lost depending on both the efficacy and thoroughness of your nuclear vendetta and the number of your own civilian deaths. In order to win you must wipe out the enemy population and simultaneously disable the enemy's ability to retaliate against you. This is an extremely difficult task since launching an attack on the enemy exposes the positions of your own Ground Silos, Subs and Bombers the moment they launch nuclear weapons, making you extremely vulnerable and exposed to a crushing counter-attack.
Desperate attempts must be made to form fast, tactical alliances, alliances that may at any moment break-down to become the treacherous and most deadly of betrayals. Everyone looks to each other in a state of nervous suspense and paranoid accusation. In all-out nuclear Armageddon, everybody dies, everybody loses, you just have to make sure you lose the least!

The most unintentionally unsettling game I have ever played. Would recommend if you have an itchy trigger finger and a full bottle of whiskey as you watch the world kill itself in the most violent way possible.

Pros:Neat layoutNeat styleVery nice ambienceVery good soundtrack

Cons:increasingly horrifying ambience as the game progressesVery good soundtrackFeelings of regret as your local city gets blown upWanting someone to hold you as your real life city gets blown upTulsa never gets hit until the end

This game only really comes alive in multiplayer as you destroy all of some poor Guy's cities and turn them into a glowing pile of thermonuclear waste and ash. The plodding slowness of the ICBM's to reach their target will make you groan with impatience and yet the sheer amount of things that need to be micromanaged will make you feel almost badgered. It all goes towards the tense atmosphere it manages to create.. The simple retro graphics are also great and also help to distract you from looking back on the film in a sort of 'Flight of the Navigator' way. (Let's face it, this foreboding map and the 'Control Room' thing that looked like NASA were the coolest things about it)

The audio is bang on .. but I have headphones on for teamspeak so that woman's anguished screams are just too creepy .. if you could just turn her and her coughing off it would be a plus.

Oi Introversion! I will give you a better review when I get the email about how you've all started work on Darwinia 2. <-- Apparently this is the sad state of gaming journalism these days. Shame, but gotta move with the times.

Here is my quote for the website, metacritic, steampage, box .. I hope they use it as it took me a while to come up with ..

'DEFCON It's like digital Chess, if Chess had loads more moves and thermonuclear weapons.' Gaz

It's amazing what can be accomplished with a handful of previously used concepts and carefully balanced rules. DEFCON: Everybody Dies, the latest title from UK-based Introversion Software, places you in the middle of your very own nuclear bunker, planning the demise of the world above. Surprisingly enough, the most attractive aspect of this game is its simplicity. A single glance at a screenshot will quickly illustrate that this isn't a graphics-intensive game which, like so many on a nearby retail shelf, incite purchases with incredibly realistic rendering.DEFCON is like a game of chess with a deadly spin: a series of units is placed on a pre-defined map and a set of strategic actions take place. However, when the king falls, more than half of the world's population has been killed. As the website suggests, it's not about winning, it's about losing the least. The game divides the world into six territories which are pitted against each other in an epic struggle of who will press the big red button first.Since the rules of the game are so easy to understand, anybody can quickly join in on the mayhem. As the game timer advances, the DEFCON level increases, changing the combat options of the players.The key element to this game, which Introversion has expertly mastered, is maintaining the atmosphere. No dramatic music is queued when launching your nukes, no explosions challenge your subwoofer when a city is vaporized, and no screams are heard when a few million people die. DEFCON highlights just how easy it is to ignore the painful deaths of half the world's population when you're safely hidden in an underground bunker somewhere, plotting the demise of the enemy.DEFCON has a fairly nice presentation. Both the game's manual and website are built on a very fitting template made to look like a 50 year-old booklet which hasn't been touched since the end of the cold war. The manual reads fairly easily, in part due to the simplicity of the game.The auditory elements of DEFCON are limited at best. The game's atmosphere thrives on solemn low-volume music which just barely breaks an otherwise dreary silence. Whilst the tracks themselves are fairly good and appropriate, most gamers won't really notice unless they really crank up the volume.DEFCON is clearly intended to be played against human players. The variety of tactics and strategies that make this game challenging can only come from human minds. The AI is still respectably intelligent though, if you're not quite ready to challenge real players.Simply put, it's an amazing game. It could be argued that the appeal is limited, as after all, there is only one map to play on. But due to shifting alliances and perceived threats, the game never fails to feel anything but completely fresh.An interesting concept, classic battle graphics and tremendous replayability, this game has it all.

DEFCON is one of the best strategy games ever made. It only takes about 100MB on your hard drive, but it will consume many, many hours, days and weeks of your life. It's graphically beautiful, atmospheric, and comes with excellent soundtrack. Highly recommended.

Excellent whiteboard mechanics, was very fun drawing various things with friends, usually of an obscene or humorous manner.There's also some minigame about nuclear war or something in the background but nobody cares about that.

I don't usually buy games like these, but after playing the demo, I had to have it. There's just something about strategy games such as these that make me feel in control. "The Life In the Machine" story from the reddit no sleep board described it perfectly:

"People in their daily lives have no control over their environment. They are told what to do, where to go, and how to live. Their jobs consist of standing or sitting somewhere until it's 5 PM and they're allowed to head back home. It's no mystery they're unhappy.

For many people videogames are an escape to a world where they are in control, or live exciting fake lives filled with adventure. The aspect of control is found in strategy games."

Or in this case, the strategy of nuclear holocausts. Military strategy games in general draw my attention, but the simplicity of this game makes it seem real to people who don't know any better. I love it.

Defcon is one of those games, or your everyday products, that will grant you a different perspective and will eventually change your entire perspective when it comes to understanding the big picture. You'll end up playing an imaginary god of war and you'll ruin or *save* more lives than you would -or wouldn't- think of.

You'll get the ultimate point of view and the game will hand you a set of warfighting machines and mechanisms to kill as much as people as you can in order to win an endless war. - Or, simply use Diplomacy. Which might seem boring; And it actually is, when it comes to the comparison between killing millions to kill more millions. At this point, Defcon gives you the ability to slaughter the nature itself and unleash the true nature of men; Unleash the savage side of yours upon the entire World. - And, eventually, turn our little blue and green *heaven* into a dust.

With its minimalist and just-enough artstyle, Defcon is one of those games that will never get old.

Similar to Hearts of Iron but much simpler. Still a very complex game with massive replay value. Doesn't seem like much at first glance, but when you get into a game you realize that there is an overwhelming amount of decision making that can either break you or, if you can capitalize upon the pressure, can bring glorious victory... and by glorious victory I mean incredibly violent apocolyptic mass murder.

Some cool features are the color configurations. In the screen shots it is set to "default" which is a very blue and black oriented view, but you can completely customize everything the way you want it to meet your specific tastes. Some of the color schemes can be harsh on the eyes but it's completely up to you on how you choose for the game to look.

I've only played a short time, but can definitely say this game is good. I got it for $0.99 on sale so you can't beat that but I would definitely pay the full price for this as well.